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- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
- From: jbodnar@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (John Bodnar)
- Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
- Subject: Re: DCF/2...
- Message-ID: <85587@ut-emx.uucp>
- Date: 19 Dec 92 13:43:12 GMT
- References: <1992Dec15.064138.21290@wam.umd.edu>
- Sender: root@ut-emx.uucp
- Reply-To: jbodnar@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (John Bodnar)
- Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX
- Lines: 32
-
- According to adhir@wam.umd.edu (Al Dhir):
- >I am curious about DCF/2 for OS/2. I DLed the dcf2show file from hobbes
- >and watched the show, but it left me with a few unanswered questions.
- >Will I be able to see a DCF2 drive from within native DOS? Or will I
- >be stuck only being able to see it from OS/2? What kind of a performance
- >hit can I expect on my system when using this product (I have a 486/50)?
-
- I can speculate about the answer to one of your questions here because
- I've used other real time disk compressors under DOS.
-
- You shouldn't worry about a performance hit because most disk compressors
- actually >improve< performance slightly. How so? Well, it takes less time
- to load a compressed file into RAM, and the decompression takes place in
- RAM where it occurs pretty quickly. There is some decompression delay, but
- I've installed several of these programs on 386SX laptops, and I don't
- notice anything. Your 486DX-50 should make these delays negligible.
-
- Now, there will be a small delay when you do disk writes because
- compression is naturally slower than decompression. OS/2 caches disk
- writes, however, so this hit will be less pronounced than it would be under
- FAT systems without write caching (where I've done most testing).
-
- The only other place where I could see a chance for delays would be in the
- OS/2 API. This is just pure guess work and probably wrong (which is good),
- but I wonder if any overhead in the OS/2 API that DCF/2 must deal with
- could factor into overall performance. I suppose the people at
- Proportional will have to answer this one.
- --
- John Bodnar : Friends don't let friends use Windows!
- The University of Texas at Austin : But I'm still waiting for Microsoft
- Internet: jbodnar@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu : Solitaire NT! Heaven forbid, another
- UUCP: ....!cs.utexas!ut-ccwf!jbodnar : productive user of OS/2 v2.0!
-